Arts and Entertainment Altan Brings an Irish Christmas to Berkeley by Brian Kluepfel As part of the Partners in Education program integrating cultural history and school lessons, Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley has combined with the Berkeley Unified School District for the past two years to open children's eyes to other cultures through music and performance. This December Berkeley's students will experience an Irish Christmas, culminating in a concert by the legendary Donegal band Altan. "These concerts really bring place and performance together," said Laura Abrams, Zellerbach's Manager of Education and Community Programs. "We try to link the arts to the core curriculum so that the kids go to the performance knowing more about what they are seeing." Local artists Shay Black, Shira Kammen, Eileen Mize and Pam Swan were chosen to bring different parts of the tradition alive. They first held workshops for the twenty teachers involved, so that they in turn could share the culture with their pupils. The artists also visited ten classrooms for 45-minute sessions. In total, over 1,800 students from Kindergarten through Grade 7 were involved. Black, known on the local music scene for hosting the Sunday night session at the Starry Plough, schooled teachers and students on the tradition of the Wren Boys and Mumming, the Saint Stephen's day customs that many feel have their origins in pagan Ireland. Black, who resided in Liverpool for many years, notes that Mumming is part of a broader British Isles tradition. "I never did Mumming in Dublin growing up. I knew of it more as a 'down the country' tradition, places like Wexford, Clare, Kerry and Cork. Sligo, Fermanagh, and Armagh also had their own groups" he said. "I was in quite a number of Mumming plays in England, plays that came from Cheshire and Lancashire," added Black, who will base his teaching on a Mumming play that was actually performed in Dublin in 1952. He notes that an advantage of teaching the Mumming tradition is that is has always been adapted with a nod to regional variations. Black will also talk about the disputed origin of 'going on the wren.' Some feel it began when Irish soldiers startled a wren, which in turn awakened Viking troops, leading to an eighth-century Irish military defeat. Others say St. Stephen himself was hiding from persecutors when the fabled bird gave away his whereabouts. Still others say it is a pagan sacrificial rite, when a beautiful and revered creature is offered up at year's end. In any case, the schoolchildren of Berkeley will at least learn the lyrics to 'The Wren in the Furze,' though they certainly will not kill a bird in this politically-correct burg. Multi-instrumentalist Pam Swan and her musical partner Shira Kammen will be providing the musical background for the mumming play, and the subsequent dancing. Swan will give lessons on "What Makes Irish Music Sound Irish." "There are basically five things that really separate Irish music," she said. She and Kammen will first discuss (and play) the genre's typical instruments, including fiddle, piano, harp, uilleann pipes, banjo and guitar. Beneath the instruments is the structure. "The basic rhythms of Irish music are steeped in jigs, hornpipes and reels," said Swan. She will share a further bit of musical geekiness with the kids. "In terms of modes, a lot of Irish music is based not on major and minor modes, but on mixolidian and dorian scales," she added. Swan also feels the origins of Irish music are a key component of its sound. "Its chord patterns originated on pipes, so that's why there's a lot of open fourth and fifth drones. And the music is really based on set dances. That's why all Celtic musicians can get together and learn tunes really quickly, because the structure is always the same," she said. Eileen Mize of Oakland's McBride School of Dancing will introduce Irish dancing concepts. Mize, a champion dancer who has lectured at the University of Limerick on the history of Irish dance, also performed with Black, Kammen and Swan in last year's Christmas Revels, which concentrated on Irish traditions as well. In addition to providing an overview of Irish Dance-from the 18th Century Dancing Masters in Ireland to "How Riverdance Became a Verb"-and demonstrating some of the various rhythms of the steps herself, Mize will get the teachers on their feet. "We'll be doing a Bonfire Dance, which is in the Celtic tradition where the image and symbolism of the circle is important," said Mize. Her focus will be more on the folk tradition of dance as a means of celebration, whether in weddings, wakes or, like this event, the turning of the seasons. The culmination of the program will be the Altan concert for children, held on December 13, several hours prior to the evening performance, which will be open to the public. Altan will perform a special version of 'The Year's Turning,' a concert which speaks of the imminent Winter Solstice and the changing of the seasons. Songs will be sung in both Gaelic and English, bringing children back to the days when mid-December signaled a turn toward a lush springtime which would leave the bleak and black winter behind. A Legend Passes: Richard Harris by Mary Rose Doorly I met Richard Harris in Toronto for the first and last time on the morning of September 11 of last year. I was going to interview him in connection with the film My Kingdom which was showing at the Toronto film festival and although reports were coming through about the twin towers tragedy, the full enormity had not really hit us. By that afternoon the Film Festival had been postponed and the subway, public buildings and the airport shut down. Harris was all fired up about My Kingdom in which he played an aging mobster seeking revenge for the murder of his wife. I remarked on his unusually understated performance and he complained that everyone nowadays was always asking him to stop shouting and tone things down a bit. After a bit more chat about the film I decided to broach him on another subject altogether. "We're related you know," I said. "You're my mother's second cousin. Rosie Quaid from Limerick was my grandmother." This didn't go down too well. "There's no way that you are a relation of mine. I've never heard of Rosie Quaid and I don't know what you're up to," he roared. Well I wasn't giving up. I told him about his eight brothers and sisters and the farm that he grew up on in Limerick and all those childhood exploits with Uncle Jerome and Uncle Charlie and Uncle Michael. How he played rugby for Munster and had broken his nose nine times. When Frank McCourt's name came up his face turned murderous again and he said things that I couldn't repeat. The gist of it was that McCourt had made Limerick look like a shameful place. The Limerick in 'Angela's Ashes' never existed, according to Harris, and McCourt had grossly exaggerated the levels of poverty. Things calmed down a bit when he talked about his beloved 11-year-old granddaughter who had insisted that he take on the role as Albus Dumbledore in 'Harry Potter.' "I'm like butter in her hands," he said. When I asked him about his gallivanting days he said that they were over. He was off the drink completely except for wine and Guinness (work that out) and that recently, after taking a long look at the family tomb during a funeral in Limerick, he had thought to himself 'what they wouldn't all give to come up for five minutes and have a Guinness.' In 'My Kingdom', a re-working of Shakespeare's King Lear, Richard Harris gives the most outstanding performance of his career in this bittersweet meditation on old age and death. Just released in Ireland, it's a fine commemoration of this remarkable man who consistently stated that he didn't care if he was remembered or not. Doesn't look like he has much choice-in Limerick they're already planning to construct a memorial to him. At the end of the interview, (I had been given fifteen minutes but had been allow to stay for 45), he looked at me and said that he had decided that we might be related after all. "Only someone as cheeky as yourself could possibly be a Quaid," he said. He even let me call him Uncle Dickie. Richard Harris: Born in Limerick in 1930, died in London 2002. Ar dheis De go raibh a anam. Thirty Years in Music: Kevin Burke by Dave Soyars In 2002, fiddler Kevin Burke is celebrating his thirtieth anniversary in the music business. Through that time, Burke has been involved with an impressive amount of bands and people influential in the history of Irish music, while being universally recognized as one of the masters of his instrument. Over the phone from his long-time home in Portland Oregon, he credits his parents for nudging him in the right direction. "My parents come from Sligo, which is renowned for fiddle and flute music. Both had a strong interest in music but neither of them played. They never had lessons, so they wanted to make sure it didn't happen to me. When I was seven or eight I had very little interest in it, but by the time I was twelve or thirteen and took a strong interest, I already had the basic skills. Then I was glad, but at first it was completely my parents' idea." He said. While his friends were following the pop music of the day, Burke was playing traditional music "with people of my parents' generation." This led to stints in folk clubs in London (where he hung out with Paddy Bush, Kate's older brother), a recording session with Arlo Guthrie, who he met in Ireland, and a variety of bands including the legendary Bothy Band, one of the guiding lights of the Irish scene in the late 1970's. Out of that scene came Patrick Street, the band he helped form fifteen years ago, which combines two singers, Andy Irvine and Ged Foley (who also play bouzouki and guitar respectively), with two instrumentalists, Burke and former De Danann accordionist Jackie Daly. Their new CD, Street Life [Green Linnet GLCD 1222], features an engaging mix of tunes, from well-known jigs and reels like 'Drowsy Maggie' and 'King of the Pipers' to a pair of hornpipes given something of a brass band feel by the arrangement and playing of guest Cal Scott, plus a rousing set of polkas led by Burke and Daly. Burke's fiddle also lends able support to some impressive songs, like Irvine's American traditional styled pro-union song 'Down in Matewan.' The song likely to be most attention-getting, however, is 'If We Had Built a Wall,' a song Burke and Foley heard sung by its writer Dominic Madden in a local pub. Inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall, Madden imagined an Ireland with 'a wall from Dundalk to Donegal' which would then be brought down by worldwide demand, at which point 'we could sell the Germans souvenirs.' Meanwhile Burke continues to maintain a solo career, which he enjoys because "a lot of people came to this music through bands, and have forgotten, if they ever knew, that this music used to be played without accompaniment. When I started doing it four or five years ago, I wondered what kind of response I'd get, and people seemed to like it, so I've kept it up." He said. Add to that the Celtic Fiddle Festival, featuring fiddlers of three countries, and he continues to lend his skills to an incredibly diverse amount of great music. Through it all, he's always been an engaging performer in whatever setting. "I remember Arlo [Guthrie] saying that folk music's charm is in its intimacy," he said. "But if you act exactly the way you are in your sitting room it won't work. You'll look detached and arrogant. So you have to translate that fireside mood to the stage somehow, even though it's an artificial environment for the performer and the audience." Kevin Burke will perform with Gerry O'Beirne on December 10 at The Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz, and solo at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley on December 12. Paul Carr reviews The Kilfenora Céilí Band Live in Lisdoonvarna This CD is as much a vibrant céilí dance music recording as it is an historical record. This first live CD from the renowned Kilfenora Céilí Band does this through its excellent and detailed liner notes and its music. Its music is not only as live as living gets (you can hear the dancers' feet battering away), but the tunes themselves and they way they are played are historical documents handed down over generations of County Clare musicians. Tracing is an expression in Irish music used to describe musicians' habit of going over the history of a tune, and in fascinating detail do the liner notes here trace the history of the music-and the people that are its living expression. The town from which the band gets its name is a wee north-west Clare village small in size but big in music and history. Between the three pubs, the beautiful Burren Visitors' Center, Vaughan's barn-where the dancing is-and the shops, it's a place that offers music lovers a true taste of Irish traditional music, dancing, and hospitality. Kilfenora is a short drive from Lisdoonvarna, where this CD was recorded. And what a night it must have been when they made this CD. If you've never heard this kind of music before, or never seen it played live for dancers, this CD will take you to that dance hall under that Irish sky, an draíocht a bhí ann, the people dancing, touching hands, together forgetting the cares of that day. And if you've danced these dances before, you'll know straight away that this was a night of bliss as close to perfection as nature will allow and humans can tolerate. The tunes flow, the dancers' shoes whip the floor, and the applause rings. This CD is available from www.custysmusic.com Andy Wilkinson on the best crop of 2002 Irish Rock and Pop 2002 was supposed to be better, or so they told us. Instead, here we are in the middle of a vicious recession which government and voters alike seem to be pretending isn't happening. Oh, and World War III will begin shortly, planned with all the strategic genius of a stoned 4am Risk session. Fertile times for the historical conduit of teenage rebellion, one would think. Think again-former people's poet Bruce Springsteen mouths middle class platitudes, Eminem is now a commodity, and Courtney Love is pimping Kurt Cobain's soul for a new frock. And so we look, as we always do, back across the water for a familiar accent, a hometown hero who gives even the tiniest hint that they know you, your life and what the hell everyone else's problem is. Here they are, the soul saviours on your record players, 2002: Compilations would normally not qualify for an Album of the Year bunfight. But once a decade or so, a singles compilation rolls out that is so stunningly, surprisingly perfect that all other bets are off. This year's Abba Gold medal goes to Ash for Intergalactic Sonic 7's. The Downpatrick ex-teenagers-now, ooh, well into their early twenties-have a 19-single career which put together on one CD is a Jam Collection of three minute punk rock majesty. The tracks are seemingly randomly arranged, with the cute-pop first single 'Jack Names The Planets' right in the middle and last year's 'Burn Baby Burn' opening up. Other gems both recent (the fantastic 'Shining Light' and unreleased new single 'Envy') and ancient ('Girl From Mars', 'Petrol') keep coming and coming until at 3:09 of Track 19 you realize-sweet fancy Complete Stone Roses, there isn't a bad track on here. A limited edition comes with a 22-track bonus CD of B-sides. Put it on your list. Of course there are other compilations out just in time for Christmas. If a well-meaning relative gets you U2-The Best Of 1990-2000, make sure you get a gift receipt. U2 released exactly one good record in that decade, and yous all have 'Achtung Baby', right? Even less tempting is The Cranberries' Stars - The Best Of 1992-2002. After starting brightly and predictably with 'Dreams' and 'Linger', it's all downhill from there. You thought 'Zombie' was a complex, thought-provoking analysis of the British occupation? Try their new 9/11 tribute 'New New York' ("I look across this empty room/My heart is still in gloom") and cringe. Dublin trio JJ72 will one day have a Ten Year Best Of themselves, and judging by their second album I To Sky, it will be a belter. The tentative, Joy Division influenced prog-pop of their 2000 debut has evolved into a grander epic vision of how good the Smashing Pumpkins could have been if they had been a bit less pompous, and well, a bit more Irish. Ex-choirboy Mark Greaney's incredible voice is still the centerpiece, swooping and soaring through the registers. Backed by piano, dominating bass and the ol' loud/soft geetar, his voice morphs through your 90's CD collection-Billy Corgan, Tim Booth, Brian Molko, even Cerys Matthews, sometimes all in the same song. Bookended by a couple of lush piano/voice soundscapes ('Nameless' and 'Oiche Mhaith') and featuring the deliciously frantic single 'Formulae', this just-released classic is perfect for drinking now. Pugwash are also from Dublin, but their road to fame will be a bit more winding. The band is a vehicle for songwriter Thomas Walsh, who won't get on the cover of any teen glossies but is quietly reviving quality Power Pop on the band's second album Almanac. Now Power Pop can conjure up unsavoury images of skinny ties, mid-Atlantic accents, Fisher Price drums and 'What I Like About You'. But as Dr. Robert said, 'It Doesn't Have To Be This Way', it could be The Beatles, XTC, Jellyfish and Cheap Trick...in fact, Jason Falkner of Jellyfish guests on the album. Add Walsh's John Lennon drawl and eye for a McCartney middle eight, and 'Almanac' gives off the sweetest whiff of the Mersey since Shack's 1999 masterpiece 'HMS Fable'. Rounding out our top three original albums is Gemma Hayes' brightly mellow debut Night On My Side. Reviewed in September's Irish Herald, the Mercury Prize finalist is every bit good as you've heard. Yes it's a female singer songwriter but the only 'Woman's Heart' it will remind you of is the one that you never understood, never will, but will keep trying until your last breath. Recommended, obviously. And after that, comrades, it's a bit thin on the ground as far as albums go. But in the vinyl junkie's unrelenting search for the new, there's plenty to wash up in the clubs, pubs and singles bins. Limerick lads Woodstar have a new single out-'The Last Sad Verse of a Dumb Punk Song'-which expands their take on melancholic Americana past the obvious Neil Young/Mercury Rev comparisons. If Mike Scott had taken Route 66 out of Galway instead of the N17 it might sound a bit like this. The Chalets don't even have a single out yet but the Dublin boy/girl pop combo have record companies on their trail already. A three track demo 'Them(e) from Chalets' might be hard to find but you can hear it on their brilliant website www.thechalets.com. Finally and most excitingly, Donegal 3-piece berkeley's debut 'Hope, Prayers and Bubblegum' produced by American hardcore legend Steve Albini (Big Black frontman and producer of Nirvana's 'In Utero') is due out in the New Year. If your drug of choice is melodic hard rock with actual singing, as sharp as Fugazi and as poppy as Husker Du, get your pipes ready. These are a few sample stories. For more, pick up your free copy of The Irish Herald. Click here to find the Irish Herald vendor nearest you. 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